As CQC finds 32% of facilities in England inadequate or in need of improvement and says social care in ‘precarious’ state one wonders will we ever get to grips with this issue?

This latest report suggests

“social care is in a “precarious” state – and according to Age UK the results leave elderly people and their families “playing Russian roulette” when they choose a nursing home or other care service. Inspectors making unannounced visits to care homes found medicines being administered unsafely, alarm calls going unanswered and residents not getting help to eat or use the toilet. Some residents were found to have been woken up by night-shift care workers, washed and then put back to bed, apparently to make life easier for staff”

This is not just poor care but adult abuse.

Governments response is to promise more money for social care, however, I feel we would be foolish to rely on the same old political rhetoric. This amounts to no more than economic deception as successive governments continue to adhere to the neoliberal principles of the quality and responsiveness of free market provision and consumer choice. The current approach is failing to deliver either of these fundamental neoliberal principles as the care ‘market’ flounders. According to research, carried out for BBC Panorama by Opus Restructuring and Company Watch, the care ‘industry is in crisis with 69 home care companies having closed in the last six months and one in four of the UK’s 2,500 home care companies is at risk of insolvency.

Anyone reading this who has sought to purchase care for their relatives can attest to the lack of ‘choice’ the current system provides. Indeed most would forfeit ‘choice’ to just have one provider who we can trust to provide decent care for our loved one’s.

What is the point of choice if your choice is between an inadequate care provider or one requiring improvement?

The primary issue, for me, is that care should never be treated as an ‘industry’ because the conflation of care and profit should never ever have occurred because marker values have altered our understanding of the value of humanity in care. Arguably, the discussion needs to go beyond financial issues to consider the greater deception of successive governments who have consistently ignored their failure to develop an ethically sustainable approach to the care and support of those requiring care, especially older people.

Let’s be honest, growing old in the UK is not for the faint hearted when we consider research and inquiries over the last decade. Action on Elder Abuse have consistently highlighted the prevalence of abuse older people experience in the community, leading in 2016 to the publishing of a ‘dosier of shame’ which outlined how the abuse of older people frequently go unpunished.

From a European perspective research findings suggest older people’s experience of ageing in the UK falls behind that of many of its European counterparts, with the UK performing most poorly on indicators such as income, poverty and age discrimination (WRVS,210). The report states the UK faces multiple challenges in providing older people with a positive experience of ageing, scoring poorly (although not always the worst) across every theme of the matrix (WRVS, 2012, p.8).

This all provides a troubling vision of older people’s experience of ageing in the UK.

Successive Governments in the UK tend to address issues associated with care and an ageing population in individual ‘silos’. Research from Europe suggests those countries taking a joined up approach, where government consider how factors such as income, health, age discrimination and inclusion interact develop more successful policy approaches, which improve our care provision and the experience of ageing.

However, any action needs first to move away from the dogma of neoliberalism and take a long term approach with a strong ethical, rather than financial, foundation. This needs to be founded on a commitment to promoting care as a humane act rather than promoting the care of those most vulnerable as a product to be bought, sold and profited from.